


a transitional spectrum of wakefulness

by vaeth



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Double Agents, Gen, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, One Shot, Platonic Relationships, Pre-Fall of Overwatch, Talon Feels, Team Talon (Overwatch), featuring Gabriel Reyes as a complex and basically good person, nothing like lesbian/gay solidarity via comforting your friend during their mental breakdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 19:32:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12087861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaeth/pseuds/vaeth
Summary: "Do you know who I am?"She nodded."What's my name?""Reaper," she said."That's right. I'm Reaper."**strictly platonic Widow & Reaper. a small exploration of Widowmaker during the time of her reconditioning, before she became an active Talon agent (and Reaper also during this time, and what their bond is).





	a transitional spectrum of wakefulness

The edges of dreams fell away in crisp fractures as Reaper woke. It was still dark, still night. It was mostly  _still_. And silent. He couldn’t even hear a siren, but the traffic was there, as always. He blinked slowly, heavily, at the ceiling.  There didn’t seem to be any clue as to what had woken him. Maybe it was a dream? A dream already forgotten.

He was ready to go back to sleep until he was needed in the morning. Reaper started to roll onto his side, but as his eyes moved from the ceiling to the next point of vision in front of his turning body, he stopped.

“Widowmaker?”

She was standing a few feet away from his bed, wearing comfortable, loose bed clothes, staring at a space somewhere near him,  but more likely somewhere very far away. When he spoke, she jolted, and her eyes found his.

But she didn’t say anything.

So Reaper didn’t move.

She reminded him at this moment of an injured animal. The memory of a goat that had gotten a piece of metal into its leg fleetingly crossed his mind. His palm could remember the dryness of a fence post he leaned against; the small rocks in the dirt that pressed into his knees when he knelt to look at the animal. The sparse patches of tough, yellow-green grass.

It was gone in the next blink as he stared back at her.

She looked into his left eye, then his right. Her brows were drawn tight and began to pull tighter.

“Widowmaker,” Reaper said again, very gently.

She moved her head incrementally, micro-expressions of confusion twitching in her face. She made a sound that had no words, and her eyes shut. Reaper carefully sat up, perched at the end of the bed. He didn’t want to move too quickly. He still didn’t know what was wrong. But something was. He knew that as soon as he saw her. Widowmaker made another stressed sound, this one pitched louder at the end.

“Hey,” Reaper whispered, as he moved to kneel in front of her.

Her hand went to her head, just the fingertips pressing in. A gesture of grace. It made Reaper frown. They had molded Widowmaker into a shell of a woman of the highest objectivity. Mandatory catsuits and trained to walk, speak, move as delicately, beautifully, sensually as possible. And she couldn’t even tell. She didn’t have any degree of self-awareness anymore.

“Où suis-je…?” She groaned and another hand went to her head.

“Widowmaker. I’m right here. Can you look at me?”

She did. He wanted to frown about the trained obedience, but he didn’t. It was necessary, for the time being.

“Do you know who I am?”

She nodded. 

“What’s my name?”

“Reaper,” she said, in an American accent with no trace of French.

“That’s right. I’m Reaper.”

Her head cocked to the side. One of the hands that had moments ago been attempting to help with the pressure of a headache now caught in her hair and she coiled a finger in it. It wasn’t as extravagantly overdone as the gesture would usually have been, but it said something that this much still came out. She seemed to consider him for a long moment. Her yellow eyes looked over his scars and nose and did a once-over of his figure. Her eyes met his again, her expression pinched.

A cold wave of fear for her washed over Reaper as he realized his mask wasn’t in place.

“But you’re…” She stopped, and that cold feeling anchored itself securely into the bottom membrane of Reaper’s stomach.

Reaper had the distinct sense she stopped not because of hesitation, but because she couldn’t remember his other name. Which was good. She wasn’t supposed to. But its absence was marked in her brain. It should be something skipped over, unnoticed. A background piece of his mind, almost traitorously, took note of this, objectively, perhaps cruelly, he thought with a note of self-loathing, knowing that would need to be reported for adjustment. Widowmaker couldn’t be allowed to remember who she had been before. It was orders. As much as he hated bureaucracy and mostly everything he’d done in his life up until now, he knew Talon could do what it needed to do. As soon as it was his. But for now… for now he would follow orders and be a good double agent.

“Hang on, okay?”

She nodded.

He still moved slowly, regardless, as he reached over to his bedside table and opened a drawer. His mask went on and he pulled his hoodie up.

“See? It’s me.”

Widowmaker exhaled, her shoulders going soft, and almost as soon as Reaper noted this, she fell to the ground, twisting so one side would hit first. Still graceful. He moved automatically with her to the floor, protective instincts firing. She couldn’t be hurt. His ears were ringing, which was odd, but he put it out of his mind. Widowmaker was more important right now.

“Reaper,” she said quietly.

“Hey, Widow.” She looked at him and he thought he saw for a moment the Widowmaker he had grown to know flickered through the cracks of this confused, lost person in front of him now. Maybe it was his voice. He began to ask her questions and she nodded affirmatively after every one.

“Is it okay if I talk to you? You wouldn’t mind some noise? That’s good. I want to move to get you a blanket. Would that be okay? Okay. Here. There you go. It’s warm, right?”

“Soft,” she said in agreement, nodding again.

“Yeah. I was sleeping with it earlier. I really like it.”

“I saw,” she said, with the barest hint of amusement. He laughed gently, but went quiet again soon after as he stared at her ponderingly.

“What is it?” Widowmaker asked.

“Worried about you,” he said automatically.

She scoffed at this.

He tilted his head thoughtfully. As he did, he wondered whose mannerism this head-tilting had been originally. His? Amélie’s? Someone else’s? Widowmaker’s own? (The usual grinding pain of punishment slid through his mind at thinking of the name of the person Widowmaker was built upon the foundations of. This, too, was necessary. He needed to forget. He couldn’t ever let someone know, no matter what kind of interrogation, if he was caught. He couldn’t let her be hurt. He couldn’t hurt Talon).

Widowmaker’s hand pressed into Reaper’s shoulder, her fingers wrapping around his muscles and squeezing him gently, reassuringly, through the soft cotton of his hoodie.

What did it mean if they knew each other this much? Knew when the other needed to be grounded?

“Hey.”

“Reaper.”

“Sorry. I was thinking.”

“What about?”

“I don’t remember anymore.”

She hummed softly, almost musically. It made him smile.

“Are you feeling better?” he asked.

“I think so,” she said, an eyebrow raised challengingly.

Reaper huffed a laugh. “So you’re all better?" 

"When have I not been? I’m in peak condition, as usual." 

"Yeah, there’s the cocky Widow I know." 

"It is no transgression to be cocky if I am perfect,” she said. 

“Oh, yeah?" 

"Yes. When your stealth improves to my level during field tests, you can begin to praise yourself in my presence.”

Reaper snorted and shook his head. “I don’t think that’s happening." 

"I think it will,” she said. Something in her voice made him look up. Her eyes were fixed at a point over his shoulder. He looked over his shoulder slowly. A brown spider was on his wall. Part of him distractedly wondered if this was a blessing or an omen. He looked back at Widowmaker. 

“One of your children found me and thinks I’m lonely." 

"I have no children, but if I did, I would be so proud.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“They know how pathetic you are.”

Reaper laughed. “You’re so mean.”

She didn’t reply, her eyes still fixed on the spider.

“Do you want to let it out?”

“We could just kill it.”

Ice slid through his veins. He shuddered a bit.

She was looking at him now. “I was joking?” she said, with an eyebrow raised.

“Mmh,” was all he said.

Together, they looked for a cup to catch the spider in and something flat to fit in between the cup and the wall. Widowmaker carried the spider to a window and Reaper opened it for her. Then he popped the screen out of place. She looked at the spider and cup in her hands, then at the window, then at Reaper.

“Do I somehow set it on the outside wall or drop it and let it fall possibly to its death?”

“Your morbid and often frightening sense of humor is noted. If you are genuinely unsure about how to let it go, please hand me the container – _without_ letting the spider out.” Widowmaker laughed at his learned distrust of how she might choose to interpret a request.

“Oh, not ’ _specimen_ ’? You’re almost there.” She laughed to herself as she stepped to the edge of the window. A few strands of her hair by her face moved slightly as the night wind let a cool sigh into Reaper’s bedroom. She arched her spine backwards to place the cup just outside of the window, on the wall. Reaper studied the ceiling instead of looking at her. Sometimes her ingrained, constant seduction mannerisms were just… indecent. Or, at least, they made  _him_ feel indecent. And the echoes of guilt. A heavy weight pushed forward against his temples from – seemingly – the inside of his skull. It hadn’t been his decision, but he could have stopped this from happening. Probably. Maybe.

“Ow,” he said once, flatly, at the sudden shock of intense pain that struck him. He cradled his head in his hands, crouching slowly as he did, to be sure he didn’t lose his balance. He shifted his weight forward, then back, rocking on his heels.

“Reaper?” Widowmaker was in front of him now. 

He grunted so she knew he heard her, then groaned at the extra pain the sound had earned him, then shut up.

Widowmaker sat down beside him, pulling him against her with no hesitation.

Her arms went around him. He rested his cheek on the top of her head. They sat silently, the night sharing in this moment with them, still as silent as it had been, Widow’s hands rubbing away his tenseness and the minutes. Reaper let himself ebb thoughtlessly on the pain and rhythmic circles of hands. It was still as dark as when he first woke to find Widowmaker in his room. They hadn’t turned on a light.

Reaper shifted his head to gaze out the window, Widow’s hair making a dry scuffling sound as his cheek rubbed against it.

He expected the deep dark to have turned into a paler blue by now, as dawn approached, but Widowmaker must have woken him precisely in the middle of the night. He hadn’t checked his phone for the time. Or looked at his messages, he realized with a faint note of amusement. He would do that later. Probably needed to. Even if all he really wanted was more sleep. Especially now that he knew he would have to deal with the brass about Widowmaker’s near-slip.

Pinpricks of light in the distance, out the window, dotted the outlines of buildings. Murky oranges bled up into dark hues; a street making a clear visual divide between the top lines of a structure in the foreground and the low-angled lighting as the street and cars lit up the background buildings from below. Somewhere in this grid, he knew ought to be seeing landmarks. Maybe he should focus more on memorizing cities. If he got kidnapped and broke away, he would need to know where he was. Or if he was lost during a chase. Jumped out of a plane at the wrong time and didn’t recognize the neighborhood. It would be useful.

He shut his eyes, hoping it would also turn off the work sections of his brain, and sighed through his nose. The exhale vented through his mask in a jet of air that made some of Widowmaker’s baby hair by her ear wave. He laughed to himself softly. It happened again, and he had to hold back more laughs.

“Hey, Widowmaker? This is starting to become uncomfortable.”

He waited. No response. He called her name again. Nothing.

He pulled away, bending to get a look at her face. She was asleep, face soft and nearly relaxed, were it not for the pull in her brows. Always a bit tense. But never not calm. Not anymore.

Reaper’s gaze dragged away from her, fixing onto a point in the floor as he considered again who Widowmaker was now – something he often found himself thinking about – a thought running concurrently with the more pressing question:  _‘Is she going to be upset if she sees in the morning I moved her while she was sleeping?’_  As he found the answer in his imagined simulated scenarios to be overwhelmingly  _'yes,’_  he relaxed. Leaned back against the mattress of his bed as best as he could. He tugged down the blankets on his bed, which thankfully also dragged a pillow with them. He arranged everything as comfortably as he could for Widow. Then, he shut his eyes.

They could rest until morning.

**Author's Note:**

> firstly and most importantly: this is *not* a romantic ship fic. if you came here for str8 stuff, I'm not even sorry to disappoint you. they're both gay. thx.
> 
> atmospheric, descriptive writing is so not my forté, but I pushed myself and I made it happen
> 
> so, Widow, taking her character seriously, as-canon-describes, as this sleek, catsuit-wearing, strutting ultra sexy efficient assassin with a v-neck that goes for indecent miles -- honestly WHAT even -- but if it's Talon who *specifically* MADE her this way through neural reconditioning for honestly only god knows what reason (but it can't be good) then it sort of makes sense. am I pulling at straws? maybe. do i think it makes her more tragic and sympathetic? yep, and I'm a sucker for it, so you can suffer with me.
> 
> also playing with the idea that Reaper is probably undergoing some level of brainwashing "mental training" at this point which as far as he knows is just to protect Talon's secrets but may or may not escalate wildly into the future (that's up to you, ik it's a popular fan theory) 
> 
> this is before he's dead and properly reborn as Reaper (so he's still Gabriel here if you care about a clear-cut definition but i'm totally certain he's extra enough to have already made himself a cool goth edgelord outfit beforehand). i don't know if this actually works neatly with the timeline as far as when Widow would've been made vs when the Swiss HQ went 'plody but you know what? -- in the spirit of Blizzard's shitty lopsided retroactive piecing-it-together writing, who cares?
> 
> please lmk what you think and thanks for reading <33


End file.
